Podcast: Luis & Tyler on the Optimal Nutrition Simplified Podcast by Connor Young

How to Kill Hunger and Gain Muscle on Keto

You’re busy and driven, and you know that optimizing your health is the key to living the life you want. Maybe you’re burnt out, stressed, sick, and don’t know where to start. Or maybe you’re already dialed into your health, but maintaining your well-being feels like a part-time job. Either way, Optimal Nutrition Simplified is for you. Join Connor as he interviews nutrition PhDs, MDs, neuroscientists, fitness coaches, pro athletes, business execs, and experts in lifestyle design. We talk ketosis, interval training, intermittent fasting, meditation, nootropics, sleep hacking, supplementation, productivity hacks, and a heck of a lot more. So stay tuned if you want the systems, tools, and heuristics required to easily optimize your well-being.

Popular wisdom suggests that you can’t gain muscle while on keto, and certainly that you can’t workout for strength on a low carb diet. Luis Villasenor and Tyler Cartwright have been proving those people wrong for the last 10 years, having sustainably trained thousands of clients through the Ketogains protocol.

In part one of this episode of the Optimal Nutrition Simplified podcast, Connor Young chats with Luis & Tyler about:

  • The science of the protein leverage hypothesis, or why we get hungry,
  • Why we’ve been scared of protein with a ketogenic diet, and how much we really need,
  • How to find the happy medium of training for longevity and performance,
  • When and when not to fast,
  • The importance of whole foods on keto.

LISTEN TO PART ONE BY CLICKING HERE.

 

Luis Villasenor and Tyler Cartwright have perhaps more experience than anyone training athletes for strength, muscle, and performance using a ketogenic lifestyle. Through Ketogains, they’ve worked with thousands of clients over the last 10 years.

The second half of the interview explores optimal pre-workout nutrition, the common mistakes people make on a keto diet, and why you should chase results, not ketones:

  • How to incorporate sugar, MCTs, and protein around your workout to optimize your results.
  • How not to screw up a strength-based training program on keto
  • How to think about total caloric intake for performance and weight loss

LISTEN TO PART TWO BY CLICKING HERE.

Podcast: Luis Villasenor on the High Energy Girl Podcast with Tracee Gluhaich

I was honoured to be interviewed by Tracee Gluhaich for her High Energy Girl podcast.

Tracee is an Integrative Health Coach and Personal Trainer via her webpage www.highenergygirl.com

You can listen to the full podcast by clicking on the image below, and check some of the important talking topics below the image.

 

FROM CHUBBY TO ANOREXIC TO MUSCULAR

  • I was quite overweight when I was a kid
  • After some failed attempts in dieting, I did some research, read books and magazines and studied to do things on my own
  • My journey eventually led me to the ketogenic diet
  • I have been on the diet for almost 20 years now
  • When I in college I was going through a mild depression
  • I was eating between 200-400 calories a day, and ended up being anorexic
  • I ended up weighing 48 kilos and right now, I am 78 kilos
  • Keto helped me a lot. And I gained all my muscle while doing the ketogenic diet. I also managed to stay at a low body fat percentage
  • If you do keto properly, it is a very nutrient dense diet
  • I do not follow the classic body building of bulking and cutting, I preferred to do “gaintaining” where you are gaining mostly lean mass so you can stay at a low body fat percentage all day long and still gain
  • One can get over weight by overeating. But to get to the levels of obesity, and even with the health issues that we are facing today, it has to do with unhealthy habits
  • I see overeating as coping with stress in an unhealthy manner
  • We tend to medicate ourselves with food and food has become entertainment
  • People eat mostly without restraint and in most cases, to numb emotions or to just get through the day
  • Food has always been a central part of humanity, but we lost this connection to it where we would just eat mindlessly all day long
  • People think that being healthy requires an incredible amount of will power and strength, but they do not have the time, so they are content in being mediocre.
  • The approach of Ketogains is a little different because we don’t follow the traditional ketogenic ratios
  • Our diet is in between keto and paleo more so like a primal diet and we focus on nutrient dense food
  • Calories matter, but not all calories are the same
  • Even if you have a higher or lower caloric diet, and you are eating foods that are nutrient dense, then you are likely not going to be hungry. And you are not going to be missing any nutrients so your body will respond very well.

  • I mostly eat eggs, chicken beef, smoked salmon and some avocados here and there
  • I also do intermittent fasting.
  • People think that in Ketogains, we are anti fasting, and that’s not the issue. We are against non-intelligent fasting
  • People are always trying to get the higher numbers or high levels of ketones without understanding what it translates to and what it means
  • A Ketogenic diet promotes autophagy and even eating whole foods or foods that have a lot of antioxidants or even strength training will promote autophagy
  • Exercise is not to burn fat; we have to let go of that idea. I know that this has been pushed for ages, but we really cannot outrun our diet
  • Fat loss comes from the diet
  • The training we do is to build your lean mass, and even though you are not a body builder, having lean mass is highly correlated with having better health because your body stores amino acids which are not just for muscles
  • Every single cell in your body is made out of protein
  • Amino acids are needed for hormones, enzymes and many other functions
  • I will always like to tell my clients that our muscles are our health pension when we age
  • When you build muscles at a younger age, the better health you’ll have when you are old

ADVICE

  • Don’t fear eating protein especially that we have been told that meat is dangerous and can cause health issues, but that’s basically bullshit
  • If you don’t feed your body with adequate protein, as we age, your body will try to get aminos form somewhere and it will get your aminos from your muscle
  • The reason people get smaller as they age and become less muscular and weaker is not something natural, because it can be stopped
  • Most of our clients are usually 45 years old to 55 years old, so it’s never too late
  • There is always something that you can do and there is always room for improvement

 

HEALTH BENEFITS

  • It is something that I do not perceive that much because it has become the normal for me, but I rarely get sick
  • I am going to be 42 years old in a couple of months, but people do not believe that that’s my age because I don’t look 42 years old
  • Not getting sick and having a very good deal of energy throughout the day is also one of the biggest benefits that I have
  • I work normally 10-16 hours a day and I study, but I can really focus properly

 

Be sure to visit Tracee at her webpage www.highenergygirl.com

Podcast: Luis Villasenor on Pain Free & Strong Radio

Dr Tyna Moore specializes in the application of natural pain solutions and regenerative injection therapies to treat all varieties of musculoskeletal conditions. As both a board-certified Naturopathic and Chiropractic physician, she brings a unique perspective and expertise to the diagnosis and treatment of pain and orthopedic conditions. She also hosts the Pain Free & Strong Podcast, …

Read morePodcast: Luis Villasenor on Pain Free & Strong Radio

Of Glucose and Finger Pricks — Is Personalized Nutrition Possible?

Individualized Nutrition With the publication of the latest book of our friend Robb Wolf: “Wired to Eat”, the concept of individualized nutrition has quickly become a hot topic around fitness groups. I sincerely think that personalized nutrition constitutes the binary that nutritional science should follow to instruct humans on which is the “best diet” for them and how …

Read moreOf Glucose and Finger Pricks — Is Personalized Nutrition Possible?

Podcast: How Stress, Alcohol, Protein & Bodybuilding Affect Ketosis

  Joe and Amber from THE PRIMAL EXAMPLE podcast recently interviewed me to talk about what it really means to be ketogenic, or to burn ketones instead of glucose for energy. How does bodybuilding while keto work? How do stress and alcohol affect ketosis? Should you measure your blood ketones, and who should try intermittent fasting? …

Read morePodcast: How Stress, Alcohol, Protein & Bodybuilding Affect Ketosis

All About Fasting: Amy Berger of TuitNutrition

Brace yourself: everybody will start to try Fasting. So to clear out some fasting myths, Luis interviews Amy Berger of TuitNutrition.com on all things fasting related: who, when and how to implement a fasting protocol. Amy has master’s degree in human nutrition from the University of Bridgeport. She is also a Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS) and certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, and …

Read moreAll About Fasting: Amy Berger of TuitNutrition